Americans Rectify Their Own Wrongdoing - Which is Why Their System Works

It was America's media that exposed the abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, prompting the elected representatives of the American people to put a stop to these crimes. Americans have a fair and self-correcting system, which is much more than can be said for Muslim countries.

Watch, dear readers, how things
happen in a democratic and civilized country. When their own men in uniform
make a mess of the things in the name of protecting the nation, and invite all
kinds of allegations about their conduct in jails, lawmakers themselves check
and rectify the situation. They don’t leave it to others to ruin the situation
further.

Now, a large number of the peoples’ representatives,
drawn from across the political spectrum, both Republican and Democrat, have
gone to the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay to see with their own eyes the
situation there, and to speak to detainees to find out first-hand whether there
is any truth in what the media and rights activists keep saying. Was it a place
fit for human life? Was it a civilized set of jails, run according to international
standards? Yes, this is exactly what they were there for.

Hearing the tremendous outcry from some
Muslim and Arab journalists over atrocities committed at the Bay, I wonder whether
they should show equal concern over things that are happening inside and out
of the jails in their own lands?

I recall a case of American investigators'
arresting some militant or other in Italy some time ago. He was packed off to Egypt - not to GuantanamoBay or any other U.S. detention center - for the simple reason that the
type of torture and truth-extraction practiced in Egypt was thought to be a shade stronger than similar
procedures in the West. [This is a practice known in U.S. intelligence circles as “renditioning”.]

And who discovered this and exposed it to
the public? Well, none other than the Western media. That’s how we learn about
such happenings. We have even been able to see photographs of the torture that
took place in Abu Ghraib, in Iraq, and elsewhere, after the Western media got hold
of them and published them, fully exposing the dirty deeds. We received none
of this information from the media of the respective countries. And why is that?

I leave it to you to answer.

We have to be logical. Something has indeed
gone wrong at GuantanamoBay. Errors can happen. They can happen anywhere.

But we must also take note that is an
ongoing effort to rectify the errors there. That’s why everyone is going to
GuantanamoBay to check what’s happening; even American media representatives
have been taken there. Even after the Bush Administration insisted that all
conditions at the Bay were humane and that detainees here were well-treated,
that was not the end of it. U.S. lawmakers still wanted to go and see the situation
for themselves.

Some lawmakers have called for closing
down of the detention center. Others have called for setting up an independent
commission to investigate complaints of rights violations there. The fact
is also that quite a number of people have been released from the detention
center, after prolonged investigations or interrogations proved they were
innocent of the crimes they were suspected of committing.

It turned out that these men landed in
custody or were hauled in under strange circumstances. Those who have committed
crimes needed to be prosecuted and punished; and it is equally important that
the innocent not be made to suffer.

Civilized law dictates that at GuantanamoBay or anywhere else, all detainees should be treated
fairly. This is what the team of American lawmakers wants to ensure. They
witnessed interrogations, visited prisoners’ cells, and sampled the food cooked
and served to detainees at the detention center. While they were generally
happy with the way things were, they called for more action to ensure that
the legal process adequately handles the detainees’ cases.

Clearly, there are many more issues that
need to be addressed. For example, the camp was set up three years ago and
some of those taken there have never been charged with a crime. Their cases
need to be expedited.

The innocent ones should not be made to
face trouble. Even “enemy combatants” need a fair trial before punishment.
But the most forceful voices in support of these demands are coming from the
Americans themselves. The people’s representatives on both sides of the political
divide are united to demand that detainees at the Bay have their rights protected.